Caring for Aging Parents

​At some point in our lives, we all have to face an incredibly challenging truth: our parents are aging, and they may or may not need our help. Regardless of what your relationship is like with parents, seeing them be unable to live a full and independent life can be incredibly difficult. Unfortunately, while you’re dealing with the emotional weight of caring for an aging parent, you’re also dealing with the stress of incorporating their care into your life.

Sometimes, our parents need financial support. This might mean that they need help with medical bills, sourcing and creating a payment plan for long-term memory care, or that they need to move in with you or one of your siblings as they become unable to care for themselves in the day-to-day.

It might also mean that they need a different kind of support that’s not financial at all - they may need your time, energy, and care. In some cases, reorganizing your schedule to care for your parent, or to help drive them to different medical appointments, or to guide them through the estate planning process with a trusted family advisor or estate planning attorney, is even more of a stressor than reorganizing your financial life to meet their needs.

Many of my clients have experienced the need to care for an aging parent at one time or another, and each of them have approached it in a unique way that was best for both their finances and both their emotional and physical health. With that being said, let’s look at how you can leverage your financial plan to offer both monetary and non-monetary support to a parent who needs it.


Financial Support
In some cases, your parent(s) might need some financial assistance as they grow older. This may be because they don’t have adequate retirement savings, or maybe they’ve encountered several hefty medical bills that have temporarily put them under water.

Whatever the situation may be, know this: financially supporting your aging parents is uncomfortable for everyone in the situation. You may feel awkward or frustrated by having to take on a sudden, possibly unexpected, expense. They likely feel awkward for needing their kids to take care of them - when for so many years as they raised you and supported you, it was the other way around.

As you work to come up with a solution that allows you to support them financially with minimal stress, guilt, or embarrassment, it can be helpful to do a few things:

• Take a hard look at everyone’s budget. Can you reasonably afford to support your parents financially? Is there something they or you can do to cut spending in other areas to make this support a reality (or to minimize how much support is actually needed)?
• Be honest. Having open and honest conversations both with your parents, and with any of your siblings, or other family members involved, is key. Don’t hide things from each other just because there’s a sense of embarrassment. Approaching financial conversations with an open mind and zero judgments will help you move through them with grace - and allow your parents to maintain their dignity.
• Check your goals first. It’s tempting to jump in and save the day when your parents are in trouble - but you need to make sure that helping them financially still fits into your goals. If you can adjust your budget, or your goals, to encompass helping aging parents, that’s great. But if the level of assistance they need would derail your retirement plans, or push you to a point of having to sell your home or make other, major financial decisions - it’s okay to reevaluate and decide exactly how much you can help without hurting yourself in the long-run.
  
  
  

Non-Financial Support
​In many cases, the non-financial support your aging parents may need can be more challenging than helping them financially. For example, having a newly-widowed parent need to move in with you because they can’t care for themselves and are dealing with health issues may be a very low level financial stressor.

They may have Social Security or a pension that covers medical bills, and if you have space in your home - this next step may seem like a no-brainer. However, having a parent move in with you can be an emotional challenge unlike any other you’ve experienced before. It could go well, but it could also put a strain on your relationship as they feel they’re relinquishing dignity and freedom, and you feel frustrated and overwhelmed.

As you work to provide non-financial support to your aging parents - whether that’s time spent, help organizing their affairs, or going above and beyond to care for them when they can’t care for themselves - is going to be hard. Don’t put extra pressure on yourself to do what you know will cause more harm than it will help them.

And if you’ve committed to providing them with the support and care they need, make sure that you’re leaving room in your finances and your life for the extra expenses required to care for both you and them. This may mean hiring a part-time caregiver to sit with your mother who has dementia and can’t be left alone while you run errands or grab lunch with a friend. It may mean making room in your budget to take regular family vacations that allow you (and them - if they’re capable of joining!) to get out of the house, relax, and blow off steam.


Take Care Of Yourself, TooWhatever situation you find yourself in, make sure you’re balancing caring for your parent(s) with taking care of yourself. Shouldering the emotional and financial pressure of caring for parents who can no longer care for themselves is exhausting. Making sure you’re keeping your finances and theirs straight - while still allowing yourself some breathing room to relax and engage in self-care is key.

Talking to a financial planner can help you navigate this challenging time in your life. Together, they can help you and your parents to create a budget, prioritize self-care in your spending, organize your finances, and reevaluate or adjust long-term goals based on the amount of care you expect your parents to need in an ongoing capacity. Want to know more? Contact me today. I’d love to help you in any way I can.

Tony Velasquez runs Wisely Advised, LLC a full-service Registered Investment Advisory Firm offering Financial Planning, Accounting and Investment Advisory services to individuals, families, and businesses. 
 
Whether it's traveling, being at the beach, or at his family's ranch in Texas, Tony loves enjoying time with his family and friends. ​​